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00:00Let's start with there. In your view this moment where the Democrats do control the White House the Senate the House albeit narrowly we're still coming out of a very big economic hole. Is this the moment to strike from a taxation perspective and try to use the tax code to address longstanding inequality. I think it probably is but I don't think there's going to be many progressives in the United States or anywhere else because this is also a global agenda for corporate taxation who are going to object to what the Biden administration is doing that they're pushing up tax rate tax rates on under tax capital gains. They're hitting the top. It isn't even 1 percent of American society. It's about a third of 1 percent. They estimate that will be really hit hard by this. And they're pushing for a global corporate tax rate of 21 percent. And in the United States 28 percent. So yes this is the agenda I think to go with and it's double edged straight. So these are simultaneously progressive tax increases. And they I think appear to believe that this also has a political logic in the sense these are peoples or goes right that enable them to squeeze their spending programs past the obvious objectors in Congress as well at the same time. Well I am curious Professor. I mean we know that intentions at least when they comes to Washington and lawmakers don't always end up in results here. So let's say we actually manage to see these taxes become law be codified here. Is there a sense here that there is a plan to make sure that that money is distributed in a way or redistributed if you will in a way that actually achieved the goals are that the buy the administration says it wants to achieve. That's clearly the promised rate that this is a double whammy that they're going to act on both the expenditure and on the revenue side in a progressive way. I think the progressive worry is that harnessing those two things together ends up hobbling your investment program because you can't realistically expect to kind to get the huge tax increases that you would need to fund a genuine climate program. And I think for those of us committed really to the cause of energy transition the American jobs plan the infrastructure plan is undersized. And I think that has something to do with the way it's connected to the P4 logic. Yeah the pay for logic I'm interested in. Also the way that you talk about real redistribution and the way in which you know you're saying perhaps climate change focus the progressive nature of what Biden is trying to do isn't big enough. A lot of the therefore effort remains within corporate America to take on and decide it's morally the right thing to do as well as perhaps can earn them in the right direction as well. How much do you think that there is a hindrance of what is being done in the tax code for innovation for companies to spend and the wise right way. We had Conoco Phillips CEO on earlier saying this is gonna be really detrimental. What are the arguments against that. Well I think that's the argument you'd expect from business right. Leave us with our profits so we can invest in the right direction. That's that's very an obvious play on their part. I think the Biden administration isn't just counting on that. They. The third plank in their policy program is regulation. And if you push them hard on where the real umph in the climate side is going to come from they say it's going to come through clean energy legislation or regulatory action which will require electricity utilities to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035. So it's really the game is to balance those three components the investment side with the innovation that they hope will follow from that the revenue raising side and the regulatory aspect all acting together. I do think they think that capital is on their side because you know progressive American business can see the long run direction here and the capital is moving but they are not leaving it up to I think simply the goodwill of business. They are hoping that these three levers will work. So today we got some interesting comments from Treasury Secretary Yellen kind of got white back. And I don't think people read too much into them Bob but perhaps that the spending the aggressive stimulus might cause rates to rise in some way. Do you worry at all that whether it's at the Fed or the administration that somebody is in separate and signs of inflation commodity prices rising will cause policymakers to sort of lose their star not have the stomach to go as big as they need to go and start to like even though they say they're going to look for that for all that too and it'll cause them to slow off things about. It was a really significant and telling moment because there was a big story circulating yesterday about Yellen role in the pay for logic and her hawkishness on fiscal policy that got a lot of their play. And then this morning these comments which were immediately walked back. We're in an extremely hectic nervous news cycle right now and I think it's indicative of that. Yellen has felt it necessary to correct her position is also important to remind folks that she's no longer a Fed chair but that she's Treasury secretary instead. And so the Fed has to make up its own mind. I think they've done as much as they possibly could really to commit themselves to the idea that they will tolerate inflation increases rate that the Fed has said this is now essentially a symmetrical target. We will in fact welcome inflation over 2 percent. If if that's what comes our way. The thing to worry about which is what we will worrying about a few weeks ago is how markets react to this. It isn't so much Fed policy as such as the twitch units in the bond market. And as that story has died down a little bit attention has begun to focus on the policy makers instead. But in the longer run I think we all know that it's the big movements in the bond markets that would be really forced their hand and really test them. It won't be the inflation numbers.

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Adam Tooze, professor of history at Columbia University, talks with Bloomberg's Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick and Joe Weisenthal on "What'd You Miss?" about the Biden administration's recently released economic plans. (Source: Bloomberg)

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